I own my house and several investment properties. I purchased them from people who purchased them from people who purchased them from people. Earlier on, ownership of them was granted to people after the American revolution took possession by military might. Prior to that, it was granted by the King of England. Prior to that, people came into “ownership” by conquest (i.e., militarily taking them by force from prior inhabitants), and prior to that, by exploration (i.e., taking them by force from nature). Is this “might makes right” the original source of property ownership, or are there some brilliant Libertarian minds, wiser than I, who have postulated grander justification for the original source of the right of ownership of property?

I think the answer is in Hans Hoppe’s Theory of Socialism and Capitalism and its chapter on property. In fact, I think this is the single greatest explanation. Society made property out of need. Resources were running out (some 150,000 years ago) and so people turned to domesticating animals and growing crops which required claiming property and fencing it and protecting it from outside invaders. The emergence of and respect for property is a gradually evolving institution based on need. The need comes about solely because of the existence of scarcity. If you don’t have scarcity, and everyone can get what he wants without contest, there is no need for property. You own what you can protect from invasion. I know that sounds simple but, if so, how is it that thinkers for thousands of years couldn’t figure it out?

That’s exactly what I was hoping to avoid. That would seem to imply that property was all originally taken from nature (a state of being unowned) by force. That civilization/society/government is our manner of delegating our security requirement doesn’t make it “right” that we should have taken that property. I was hoping for a more libertarian rationale for initial ownership. If we’re acknowledging “need” as justification, doesn’t weaken our moral case against collectivism.

I think you are right, but this is the reality. There is nothing that exists external to human affairs that instructs or imposes justice. Justice comes after property. Property is the first thing and it comes about because of human necessity, and gradually emerges in social norms. But really, this was a hard realization for me. I had somehow thought of property rights as part of some eternal code of law, a view I held until I came to realize the central role that scarcity plays here. Once you understand that, you get why force is (in some ways) the very foundation of the existence of property. Mises says this at some point, maybe in HUMAN ACTION, and the first time I read it, I was stunned and became squeamish about it. But now I see that he is right. There is a contest of resources. We invented property in order to resolve the contest peacefully. but of course that requires that we owners protect their own property or make contracts that allow for its protection. Of course you could return to Locke for a different account but his account doesn’t seem to have anything to do with lived experience.

I agree with Jan Lester that Libertarianism should be about maximising interpersonal Liberty and not about property. Otherwise it would be better to call it Propertarianism. Property is a consequence of Liberty and not Liberty a consequence of Property. Most of the time, the two result in more or less the same, but there are instances in which the difference matters.

So let us start with interpersonal Liberty. Liberty is the idea that you can essentially do what you want. ‘Interpersonal’ demands two things. First that we are talking about Liberty between people. So we are talking about a political issue. It is not about natural infringements on your ability to do what you want. So the fact that the lows of nature prohibit people from traveling faster the the speed of light, is not an infringement of your interpersonal Liberty. Secondly, if we want to maximise interpersonal liberty that means that everyone must have the same Liberty. Otherwise we would not maximise the interpersonal but just the Liberty of a few people. So we want a system in which we can maximise the ability of people to do what they want with their lives.

Property is in many instances (not all) a necessary tool to maximise liberty. Starting with self ownership. If you want to do what you want then you need to first of all own yourself. Then there is property on things. If no one owns anything, no one can do what they want. That is obviously not maximising Liberty. So we need some sort of property. No matter what we demand, we need to demand that everyone has the same of it. Well, what about this: we take the earth and divided it by the amount of people on earth and then everyone has the same amount of property. Does that maximise the ability of doing what they want? Obviously not. Not every land is worth the same to everyone. There is no objective value of things. So in order for maximising the ability of people to do what they want, rather then giving everyone the exact same amount of property, we should more focus on the process of acquiring property. Then everyone can choose which property they like and try to acquire that in a fair game. So what about everyone can acquire property by keeping the fruits of their labour? That rule seems to better maximise liberty. People can then work for what they want and we know from economics that this process then also has the nice effect of reducing scarcity.

So you get the idea. You start with the idea of trying to maximise interpersonal Liberty and then you will find rules that seem to support that. I think that is a nicer way of looking at it than Propertarianism. Because, in the real world you can get clashes between people’s property and liberty and then the Propertarians don’t have an answer of how you might solve this problem. For example, Rothbard has an example in which he ask whether a boat owner can deny a drowning person the access to his boat. Everyone has an instinctive answer, which is ‘no’. However, being a Propertarian, Rothbard comes to the solution that yes he can deny that person access, because it is his property. But if you start with the idea of maximising Liberty than it becomes clear that denying a drowning person access to a boat is a far bigger infringement of his Liberty than the infringement of the boat owner. So if we want to maximise Liberty, then no he cannot deny a drowning person access to his boat. He may have a claim for some compensation, but denying a drowning person access to your boat would be criminal.

So, Jeff, you’re saying that property-owners owe society consideration for recognition of their ownership of that property. Again, that seems to strengthen the collectivists’ arguments that everything belongs to “the people.” If society grants us use or “ownership” of it, we are not alone responsible for our own productivity, and it could be argued that we do owe a debt to society.

Is this the gist of Hoppe, or is it still worth a read? I read most of “Human Action,” but I don’t recall Mises suggesting that our property rights stem from the system of justice recognizing those rights – I would have imagined the cause and effect in the other order. Are there other authors that might have a better theory on this?

I would never presume to speak for Hoppe. It’s just one chapter and worth a read. I guess I’m not be clear here. Hoppe’s point concern scarcity. Mises says property originated by securing ownership via threat of violence. As for the debt to society, there is none. It is a matter of social norms: people have to gradually come to realize that respecting the claims of others is the best way to have your own claims recognized.

So Mises argued that the original source of ownership was some guy standing on a hilltop, announcing, “This is mine,” and being prepared to defend that assertion? I had hoped for a loftier justification, like our rights to life and liberty.

If we depend upon society recognizing and respecting our property rights in order for us to actually have such rights, it begs the question as to whether collectivist nationalization of property is an infringement of individual rights, or is valid, no?

Well Mises didn’t believe in “rights” the way someone like Rothbard would use the term. He was basically a utilitarian that viewed property rights as the most efficient means to a wealthy, prosperous society (he was right about this).

Jeff is saying Mises thought private property is ultimately backed by the threat of violence since he didn’t think there is no such thing as the natural right to property, like Locke or Rothbard or Nozick would argue. Private property rights are merely established social norms.

Cory, I’m not moved by the external labor-mixing argument, nor by the internal particle-adding argument. I could certainly consume someone else’s food, and still be responsible to compensate them for it. If I swallowed your jewelry, adding its particles to my mass, I’d probably even be compelled to return *it* when my body, um, finished with it. Eating it doesn’t make it my property.

The external labor-mixing justification is even weaker for many of the same reasons.

I hate to say it, but it honestly seems like the best answer is that might-makes-right, and then delegation of protection of that “right” to the enforcers of a society which recognizes that right. I don’t like the answer, but it seems the most compelling.

This sounds incredibly obvious but it is not until it is stated: you have no property rights unless they are recognized. In the middle ages, you had property in homestead but not while traveling. And you have them today unless the state or another gang of criminals decides you do not. This is the reality. There is nothing that causes rights in property to exist other than the social framework.

I do, yes, but it hardly matters if no one else agrees. Also, I’m the one mainly responsible for maintaining my right to life. E.g, if I walk out on the interstate without looking, I still have a right to my life but I’m kind of an idiot and no one who kills me is going to be held liable. My right doesn’t matter. Same with property. If I leave my wallet on the hood of my car and go inside the store, it’s still mine but my right means nothing if I fail to protect it.

I think we are talking past each other. When I say someone has a right to “x,” I’m not saying that right is respected or upheld by society. I’m merely making the claim that others have a moral obligation to respect that right. Whether they do are not doesn’t has no bearing on if the right actually exists.

yes, and I’m suggesting that this moral obligation is an emergent norm that extends from lived experience. If the norm doesn’t emerge, we can scream all day about the immorality of others towards ourselves but it has no bearing. Morals governing rights to person and property emerge from social experimentation.

Sure you can just take them! The whole history of humanity consists of people looting each other. This is still the pattern in many parts of the world and even in the town where I live now. It’s a bad way to go about living but there it is. Rights exist when they are recognized and no other time.

So since my right to privacy is violated, it doesn’t exist? If so, then on what ground can you object to people spying on me?

“Morals governing rights to person and property emerge from social experimentation.”

I agree. Rights, ethics as a whole, are mere social constructs. But I don’t think that conflicts with my claim that rights are still inherent in every human being, regardless of if others respect them.

Ownership of property other than one’s physical body, is properly based on the principle of homesteading. That is the idea that legal ownership starts with physical improvements on previously unowned property and then progresses through legal voluntary transfer of titles through contracts.

Cory, I agree that proper rights exist whether or not they are respected. My right to life justifies me defending myself, to the point of even killing an aggressor, if necessary. To do otherwise would be a “wrong” for me rather than a “right.” If my society doesn’t recognize my right, they may be the next in line to try to take my life or liberty after I kill my would-be assassin, and my “right” in that case is to defend myself from them, just the same.

This is why I’m experiencing this conundrum over property rights. If there is a rationale by which they are ours innately, then it is merely a convenience rather than a prerequisite that society recognize and respect them. On the other hand, if our rights to property are granted by society rather than innately ours, it is society’s right to take them back, or possibly even to take any of the produce generated thereupon.

Jeff, I see your point, too. Undefended rights may be as valueless as not having them. However, I still don’t think they’re the same thing – they may be indicative of society being in the midst of a paradigm shift.

Society is an abstraction and, though real, does not have the coherence nor ability to either grant or deny one’s right to property. It is only the rulers comprising The State’s apparatus of compulsion and coercion which has that ability. The monopoly on the legal use of aggression granted to The State results in the common violation of all sorts of the property rights of individuals as in theft by taxation and conscription for war.

True, and eloquent, but if property rights are granted by the State, how can we tell when they’re merely being rescinded versus when they’re being violated? Under that definition, is it even possible for the State to violate them?

Property *titles* are granted by the state. Property rights are inherent in every human being. That is, external property rights (to your car or whatever) are merely an extension of your right to your own person (self ownership). The link I posted above to BHL explains why they are extension of SO.

Property rights are not granted by The State, but they can be taken away through force. As Rothbard and Hoppe adequately point out, property in one’s self is intrinsic and inalienable. The right to other physical assets is based on first possession, are alienable, and can be traded, gifted or stolen.

That’s not just true of property rights, Ted – it’s all rights. I can be imprisoned or executed by my State, too. It is within their power to take my life, liberty, or property. Also, my life and liberty can be traded, gifted, or stolen. I can sell or donate my organs, I can trade my labor for pay or volunteer to give it away, or I can be kidnapped or murdered. If I want to donate or sell even my heart or other critical life-sustaining organs to someone, and if no doctor would take them from me while I live, I can walk into the hospital with a note and then shoot myself in the head.

Getting back to my original question, though, our Constitution recognizes that I possess, a priori, a right to my own life and liberty, but society’s recognition seems to be the original source of my right to property. It is only my willingness to forcibly defend my rights that assures me of them. Those which my society recognizes and respects it may help me preserve when I delegate to it my right of defense of them. However, when I find myself at odds with my society, when they are trying to execute me, imprison me, or appropriate that which I believe is mine, the decision falls to me alone to suffer their injustice or to take matters into my own hands and possibly die defending that in which I believe.

Yes, libertarian theory says that all human rights are derived from the fundamental right to self and to legally acquired material property. The only legitimate use of aggression is in the act of defending oneself against aggression by another. The Constitution only reflects this truth, it does not establish it any more than does The State grant individual rights. Property titles are merely society’s effort to track the sequence of proper legal transfers of property through time.

Again, I think Rothbard does a magnificent job of developing these concepts in his “Ethics of Liberty”.

That’s what I’d like to discuss. You paraphrased Rothbard and wrote, “Ownership of property … is properly based on the principle of homesteading. That is the idea that legal ownership starts with physical improvements on previously unowned property…”

If that’s how it’s done, that means that at some point, someone built a fence around an acre or stood on a hilltop with a rifle and was prepared to defend as “his” something that previously belonged to no one – in fact, something that might have been previously used by nomadic peoples for food, water, or other resources.

What I was hoping to find by this thread was some plausible explanation as to the origin of property rights other than one which necessitated coercive force. I do not need to use coercive force to establish my right to life or liberty – merely to defend them against others who would use force against me. To establish exclusive ownership of land I believe is mine, though, I must build walls or fences to keep others out; I must forcibly exclude them from it – I must seize it. Those original homesteaders did this, and even today, laws of adverse possession transfer ownership of property from those who don’t defend it to those who take it by force.

This is what I think libertarians should find distasteful, and I was hoping that someone else had already come up with a better explanation.

Indeed I think the use of force is distasteful to libertarians, but I am afraid one looks in vain for an alternative method of defense. It is clear to me that libertarians find eminent domain seizures repulsive, but that is the way The State operates since it is simply the organization of coercion and compulsion, a monopoly on the legal use of aggression. Incidentally, if one abandons his property – fails to assert his rights – then it is proper for another to claim ownership as a homesteader.

In a peaceful libertarian society, devoid of government coercion, people may be far more inclined to cooperation through division of labor because of the vastly improved productivity which results. The inevitable psychopaths could be constrained through the use of competitive, market based security agencies and insurance companies as described in detail by Professor Hoppe.

I would not deride the usefulness of fences to delineate one’s property, they are useful and seldom imply a requirement to use violence against others.

I disagree – I think the fence is the demarcation of the point at which one is prepared to defend property. One does not build a fence because he wants neighborhood kids in his pool or strangers camping out in his yard – on the contrary, he builds a fence to establish a legal right to remove such people for trespassing, forcibly, if necessary. He builds a fence specifically to delineate the area over which he intends to exercise control.

To my original point, though, this thread appears to confirm that the initial ownership of property was the result of homesteading, planting, building, or making some other productive and exclusive use out of resources which were originally unclaimed, by mixing labor with the resource.

When I find myself debating property rights with a collectivist, what shall I tell him? He will say that nomadic visitors may have enjoyed the beauty of the property, may have camped under the trees, may have hunted there or eaten of the fruits or drunk from the streams, and that by my predecessor’s action of forcibly taking the property, he removed from the public domain and converted to private use something which many enjoyed, without recompense to those who lost their enjoyment of the formerly-public property. He would argue that property owners owe a debt to society.
Is that the function of property taxes? Since they annually appear to cover the municipality’s levy for current expenses of policing, educating, cleaning, snow-clearing, adjudicating, and maintaining, he could argue that society is not compensated for its initial loss. Is the ongoing tax-funded improvement of public and community property by the same policing, cleaning, snow-clearing, and maintenance, as well as the availability to the public of courts, public schools, public parks, and public libraries the recompense for the initial taking by force of unclaimed property by private entities? Is that the restitution, or does he have a valid argument that we owe more back to society?

That seems like a daunting argument. The achilles heel of it is that to proclaim that property owners owe a debt to society is to claim that society, normally a municipality, has an ownership claim to the property. Not only does this hold the municipality to the same standard of ownership, it actually gives the municipality, in most cases, less claim to ownership, as the individual owner has normally invested far more labor and finance in the property than the collective.

Based on the principle of ownership being claimed by mixing of labor with resources, the individual owner might or might not have more labor and capital invested in a property than the collective would, but I’m not sure a collectivist would even recognize this as a valid path to uncontested exclusive ownership. His position would be that collective society had shared use of the property and resources, and the individual owner has taken that from them by declaration, and then expects the collective’s legislators and enforcers to recognize and respect his ownership and to expend their collective resources and risk their lives to ensure his exclusive use of it. It almost seems that society’s loss of the shared use of property when taken by the initial “owner” is then further insulted when that owner imposes upon society to defend his ownership for him against other members of that society.

The only answer I can think to give him is that since the vast majority of most municipalities’ income comes from property taxes, and that failure to pay those property taxes exposes a landowner to repossession by those municipalities, that the property tax payment is what grants the “owner” license to exclusive use of the property. I’m not entirely convinced this is an adequate argument, nor that the municipality had any more right than the first “owner” to move the property out of the public domain and into its own stewardship.

Thoughts?

(PS- I think I’m going to invite my collectivist friend to take a free trial of Liberty.Me so he can weigh in, himself…)